If Winter Comes eBook

But Twyning continued to stand by the chair and to
breathe through his nose. He was reading over
Sabre’s shoulder.

The few pages of “England” already written
lay in front of Sabre’s pad, the first page
uppermost. Twyning read and interjected a snort
into his nasal rhythm.

“Well, that book’s not written for me,
anyway,” he remarked.

Sabre agreed shortly. “It isn’t.
But why not?”

Twyning read aloud the first words. “’This
England you live in is yours.’ Well, I
take my oath it isn’t mine. Not a blooming
inch of it. D’you know what’s happening
to me? I’m being turned out of my house.
The lease is out and the whole damned house and everything
I’ve put on to it goes to one of these lordlings—­this
Lord Tybar—­just because one of his ancestors,
who’d never even dreamt of the house, pinched
the land it stands on from the public common and started
to pocket ground rent. Now I’m being pitched
into the street to let Lord Tybar have a house that’s
no more his than the man in the moon’s.
D’you call that right?”

“No, I don’t,” said Sabre, but with
a tinge of impatience. “I call it rotten.”

Twyning seemed surprised. “Do you, though?
Well, how about that book? I mean to say—­”

“I shall say so in the book. Or as good
as say so.”

Twyning pondered. “Shall you, by Jove?
Well, but I say, that’s liberalism, radicalism,
you know. That’s not the sort of pap for
kids.”

“Well, the book isn’t going to be pap
for kids.”

Twyning snorted a note of laughter through his nose.
“Sorry, old man. Don’t get shirty.
But I say though, seriously, we can’t put out
that sort of stuff, you know. Radicalism.
Not with our connection. I mean to say—­”

Sabre gathered up the papers and dropped them into
a drawer. “Look here, Twyning, suppose
you wait till the book’s written before you criticise
it. How about that for an idea?”

“All right, all right, old man. I’m
not criticising. What’s it going to be
called?”

“England.”

Silence.

Sabre, appreciating, with the author’s intense
suspicion for his child, something in the silence,
looked up at Twyning. “Anything wrong about
that? ‘England.’ You read the
first sentence?”

Twyning said slowly, “Yes, I know I did.
I thought of it then.”

“Thought of what?”

“Well—­’England’—­’this
England.’ I mean to say—­What
about Scotland?”

“Well, what about Scotland?”

Twyning seemed really concerned. The puckers
on his face had visibly deepened. He used a stubborn
tone. “Well, you know what people are.
You know how damned touchy those Scotchmen are.
I mean to say, if we put out a book like that, the
Scotch—­”

Sabre smote the desk. This kind of thing from
Twyning made him furious, and he particularly was
not in the mood for it this morning. He struck
his hand down on the desk: “Well, damn the
Scotch. What’s it got to do with the Scotch?
This book isn’t about Scotland. It’s
about England. England. I’ll tell
you another thing. You say if ‘we’
put out a book like that. It isn’t ‘we.’
Excuse me saying so, but it certainly isn’t
you. It’s I.” He stopped, and
then laughed. “Sorry, Twyning.”